Glen Sorestad's latest Rider Report

Glen Sorestad regularly sends me his Rider Reports. And I regularly post them. So without further preamble …

I hate to have to say this, Brendan, but the morning news report that you and your collective brain trust in the Rider front office are still not decided on your first draft choice in tomorrow’s CFL draft paints a very unflattering picture of you and your football colleagues. The day before the draft and you don’t know who your first pick is going to be? Balderdash! What is there to decide?

Of course, it may be that you are just trying to put up a feeble smokescreen in order to ensure the teams that follow your first pick tomorrow will not be able to count on what players will be available after your choice is announced. I can appreciate that you are not going to emulate the Colts and announce your No. 1 pick ahead of the actual draft, though I really don’t understand why you couldn’t do just that. Is there some unwritten CFL code that forbids such a pre-draft announcement? Does TSN insist on the suspense for the draft telecast?

But, come on, Brendan, do you think the rest of the CFL doesn’t know who your No. 1 pick has to be? They know, Brendan. Everyone knows. There really is only one choice. And if, by any chance, the report of you and your colleagues making the decision sometime later today actually has some substance, then allow me to help you and the others in the front office with your decision.

It’s Ben Heenan, Brendan. He has been consistently regarded for the past year as probably the best overall football player in this year’s draft crop. CFL scouts have been unanimous in their assessment that this is a player who can step into a starting role in the CFL. He is perhaps the best athlete available and he is certainly the best positional player available. He comes with all the credentials that Rider Nation appreciates in one of their own home grown talents. He’s a Saskatchewan boy who at 22 years of age is prepared to anchor the O-line for the Riders for possibly the next 15 years. Heenan is the perfect choice to take up the torch passed along by long-serving O-lineman Gene Makowsky. He has the potential to be another CFL all-star, perhaps a Hall of Famer, and one of the all-time great Riders. Where else should a boy from Grand Coulee, just outside Regina, play his professional football? There can be no other choice, Brendan. It all makes too much sense.

If by any chance you and your colleagues come up with a different choice and let Heenan go elsewhere, you have no idea of the consequences that will follow such a decision – though if you read Rider Forum you may get a vague idea of what might ensue. I suspect the damages caused might be too gory to enumerate.

Even if you and your coaches feel that Heenen is not a pressing need, that you are happy with your reconstructed O-line, Heenan is still the choice because he still is the best player available and with your No. 1 pick you’d better secure a No. 1 athlete, one who is coveted by every other team in the league. To put it in the crasssest possible terms, Brendan, Ben Heenan is the greatest asset you can secure with the first pick tomorrow and your failure to secure that asset for the franchise would be an unforgivable blunder and one that would never be forgotten, one you would never live down. You wouldn’t seriously run such a risk, would you, Brendan?

There is only one choice and tomorrow — I and the rest of Rider Nation expect that you will make it. I hope you’ll also say afterwards that it was a decision that was made long ago and that it really wasn’t a very difficult one at all.

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